A coalition of 1,100 small-business owners held a press conference on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s illegal trade war, to discuss the damage it’s so far done to their operations.
Although Trump trumped the introduction of the tariffs as “Liberation Day,” Texas businesses paid $13 billion — the second-highest among states — in penalties imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Although the U.S. Supreme Court in February ruled 6-3 that the president used the IEEPA to enact tariffs — a power reserved for Congress — that ruling came too late, the business owners said.
“We did have to raise our prices 10-30%,” Kacie Wright of musical instrument company Houghton Horns in Keller, Texas, said during the presser. “It’s sad to see us having to raise prices for our customers, but think about the impact that is going to have on the music industry downstream.”
Meanwhile, Dan Anthony, executive director of We Pay Tariffs, the coalition representing the small business, reiterated that not all the tariffs had been lifted following the Supreme Court ruling.
“When you hear the Supreme Court struck down tariffs, it doesn’t mean they struck down all of them,” Anthony said. “There’s still a lot of them that are out there that are very company- and product-specific.”
The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank estimates that Trump’s tariffs cost Texas up to $52 billion in Gross Domestic Product over the past year.
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